President Reagan will likely attend the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Oct. 5 cornerstone-laying ceremony, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
The ceremony has been scheduled because the Department of Interior earlier this month approved the design specifications for the museum, which is scheduled to open here in 1990.
“This was the final license we needed” before construction could begin, explained William Lowenberg, vice chairman of the council.
Michael Berenbaum, the museum’s acting project manager, said that construction will begin within two weeks.
An informed source at the memorial council said that there is a “superb possibility” that President Reagan will attend the cornerstone ceremony, although it is not final. Reagan attended an October 1985 preliminary ground-breaking ceremony.
Lowenberg said that $60 million of the museum’s $140 million fund-raising goal has been raised so far. Money is being raised for the museum itself as well as for “perpetual endowment funds” to maintain the building and staffing.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
